hey let me try to, for once, find a better way to answer. @leetennant
actually that did NOT owrk out i absolutely failed to answer this swiftly. but i guess this will do as my whole Thoughts so i don’t have to think anymore. thank you so much for writing what you did, it really made me think…..i’m gonna post the rest of my comment in the comments woops
I mean I could be reductive and ignore the way in which a lot of this symbolism relates to people’s actual belief systems. And I will because that’s my jam. I just want to plant a flag on it in this instance (also because a lot of the symbolism went completely over my head, I’m not a part of this culture and so I’m reading this text as an outsider).
i didn’t think about the religion part overtly so when you mentioned it it sparked another round of philosophical pondering and what creators there are. she mentions at the end that she doesn’t know if anyone created her but thank god that she could experience a world with colors finally. and this is a way that the show accepts everything that’s around, to try anything that works, i really like the idea of everything being able to exist at once; no judgement, no one is wrong or right.
Anyway, to be reductive in my way: to me the jellies were representations of people’s emotions. So they weren’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’, they were just there. And if they were repressed or got overwhelming then the ‘energy’ of them built up and built up until they exploded like a whale spout of emotion. And so they built a school on top of the spout and covered it over and to me that was a symbol of emotional and – in this case – sexual repression. And that repression flowed over in that awful awful conversation in the teacher’s room, which was just horrible to witness.
i agree completely. they’re a physical manifestation of the world and emotions. it starts off with being represented as sexual which is important in a more sexually conservative society. i really enjoyed the lack of white goo between jellyfish and seungwon which indicated to us that there was no ‘like’ and i felt like my adult ~sensibilities~ was pushed onto them. i’ll get to the last sentence with the rest of what you said but hurtling towards that inevitably towards the end as things compound was so sad and so beautiful.
This means that ghosts are just emotional remnants of the people who loved and lost someone and I understand there are people who believe literally in ghosts but I’m not one of them. To me the whole show was about confronting and coming to terms with yourself as a whole person, even the parts that are nasty, selfish, embarrassing, humiliating or just plain depressing and negative.
so i, personally, believe in ghosts, and possibility, and a creator, and whatever. i don’t think it has to be either/or (but lbr i rarely think anything does.) the ideas of ghosts, a soul, spirits whatever is tied to personhood and all the things one was or is at one point. i hope this makes sense but emotion is tantamount to existence.
i have dreams about my grandma and grandpa sometimes and they’re so real. sometimes i wake up and think they’re still alive. my best friend is muslim but she’s like me with regards to religion (agnostic spiritualism something something.) but she told me that when the dead visit you in your dreams that means you meant a lot to each other.
i haven’t processed either of those deaths and probably wont ever and that’s largely because for the both of them i didn’t want to be around them as they got sicker. it was selfish and awful so i feel like with the dreams i can slowly come to terms with it.
have you seen hereditary or midsommarr? the director has a very interesting relationship with family, definitely some huge mommy issues, but both films left a serious impression on me because the main characters were running from their grief, mourning, their problems.
i have a whole-ass thing about midsommar (and i just remembered this is also what the show reminded me of! gotta make a list of films lol.) you’re supposed to just magically find your way out of a hole and not process what you feel. if you just smile you’re supposed to be okay. there’s another part in the film about usefulness and age—and cycles are big in the show—and if you should exist after you outgrow your usefulness to others (baek hye min.)
like in the movie, this fucking cult, these fucking jellies, these adults want all t run away these stupid teenage feelings, these stupid adult feelings, being able to shatter into pieces. if you just laugh at the top fo your lungs you’ll get better. in the end that’s how your demise finds you faster.
also pain and growing can be communal but conforming and feeling the one emotion as just one group, a blob, for safe happiness is the worst kind of existence. it doesn’t let you be a person just a part of a whole.
I loved that a character with a physical disability walked around with a figurative shield against people’s judgement. He was untouchable. And the Mite Eater’s whole arc of coming to terms with having aspirations that didn’t fit into the box that we try to put kids into. I mean at the end she literally drove out of her box and then told everyone she was in love with a girl.
that’s such a good point; i didn’t even think about his shield. there’s so much i miss even if i cant turn my brain off. i was really floored when they introduced his leg because she saw him and was enamored by his shield, for others it’s because of his looks, but when you see the metal then the shot of him dragging his legs it automatically takes him down a peg. he is seen as less than, or too different, or that this is something really wrong and detracts from him being attractive.
i felt the “oh” moment in my head. like an “oh, i didn’t expect that.” maybe that he would have something so visibly obvious and maybe that nam joo hyuk would play a character with something deemed unworthy and unattractive.
when they drove past 5.38…i didn’t get it the first time but when they moved past i started to cry. i loved that the mites were cute and she was a mite-eater and had to eat and eat and eat to not get sick. it’s rare to even let people in these shows consume that much, much less girls, without judgement. i realized that ahn eun young says the kids are healthy and i think that means in the way that everything they’re going through they should be allowed to go through. they’re healthy, just growing. it’s the school that sucking the life out of them to bring supposed good fortune to the greedy; the ones who don’t want to end up poor and unremembered or, worse, no one knowing you existed or passed.
finally i get to that scene with the teachers and it ties back into the many influences i see kyoung mi drawing from. i thought of “us” and “get out” by jordan peele are also two comparative films and all four films are horror! i truly believe this is a real horror show! i also thought of HDM (which i am positive one of them was inspired by. the movies i know for sure were seen but it was just too uncanny to not be.)
that conversation was such an indictment on everyone. i see it as more than just their sexual repression, which is extremely important to their overall subjugation, but a perfect reminder of all this repetition. the laughing yelling but trying to kill themselves, the yelling together in the classrooms, the women gathered at her friend’s house, the ducks, the laughter and smiling, team efforts and sports, hazing, whatever.
i keep saying this word but literally conform and the rigidness of the chinese symbols all the buildup emotionally, mentally, physically leads us to this understand fo “safe happiness” it’s that scene through and through.
i can’t pin down what “weird” means in the show’s terms but at its best it means unique at its worst, i think, it means the suppression and control others want.
what better way to start on them young? the jellies arent evil but what th ejellies can come to mean. evil is the mindset that you can’t be different and that you need to be fixed. i was stunned at the AIDS comment written in but it was another one of those things where it made prejudice seem so much simpler. they didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about and difference was a fucking threat.
“we should quickly inform the parents of the situation. when the children are old enough to know how to stay safe, we can tell the parents then.”
“[homos] should be dealt with at a young age”
and in pyo’s reply—it doesn’t need fixing. NONE of them do except to be helped through the pain and know it’s ok to feel. i think its’ interesting that the school was also intentionally built there because in my mind it’s like….we’re all pretty free when we come into the world but people pin us down and chain us to something. an internal world of a teen is something tough already why does everyone want to make it harder?
and none of these people are normal so what makes them so wrong and abnormal?
As a nurse, Ahn Eun-young was somebody who devoted her life to tending to other people’s wellbeing. So the question becomes – can she maintain that for her whole life? Can her whole life be service? And the answer becomes ‘no’, she needs things that are hers and hers alone. But also that doesn’t mean she needs to abdicate her responsibilities. She can – and should – do both.
Honestly I just loved the whole thing. And yes that’s because I chose to read it all metaphorically but I can’t really help that. That’s me.
i wonder if she can. i was surprised she was so happy without them because i feel like i would go crazy without a set path. i mentioned this a couple of times so excuse me for repeating but kyoung mi said she was doing this at a really dark time in her life as she was questioning if she wanted to quit. eun young is the happiest portrayal of hers yet; she has to accept her fate and live.
“i was surprised she was so happy without them because i feel like i would go crazy without a set path.”
Oh I’m not surprised at all. The reason she lost her ability to see the jellies was because she’d stepped over that imaginary line of accepting her life and wanting something different and running away from those new emotions. She was scared of her feelings for In-pyo and scared of rejection and scared that her weirdness made her unlovable and she just wanted to put all that behind her and live a life of simplicity without all the complications. Her only real friend died and she wanted to turn off herself completely and be a person who didn’t feel. I was honestly so upset at the end when her own sinkhole of emotions blew and she literally left In-pyo in the dark and just RAN.
lmaoooo when he was like YOU WONT LEAVE ME and she promised smdh. i really didnt want her to leave bc of his leg.
her wailing like a baby…god i didn’t realize how much that would mean to her i guess. but what would she do if not for all she’s ever done? i guess that’s my personality. as much as she helps others emotionally, inevitably with the jellies, it sucks that all that isn’t enough to be happy or believe in yourself. but i don’t know what would happen if i had to deal with all that constantly. im already an emotional mess.
but she doesn’t want to be like them either. it would have been easier had she been normal i spose. but it probably would have always came back. you can’t outrun what you don’t deal with.
it makes her unique though being jaded and youthful. all the burden could have made her someone else. that’s why she’s school nurse ahn eun young u__u
oh no i meant when she realized her powers would come back. the whole scene with him is wonderful. i’m going to remember it for a long time and the dream she had after. the fact that he also was ready to shatter and didn’t beg to hold on was indicative of who he was as a person imo and i felt like he was a truly good soul.
Wow, @amara and @LT, that’s really good! I was trying to figure out some of this stuff, but wasn’t looking for the emotional truth under the characters’ actions, so they just didn’t make sense to me – the pointer about groups, the parallelism between Hyemin and Eunyoung having a set path, the reasons why Eunyoung lost her power and her running away… Jee! Of course, this drama works a lot better if you look at it from an emotional and symbolic – let’s say “poetic” perspective – instead of trying to figure out a “logical” plot
yes!!!! esp when eun young says “nothing is set in stone” in regards to hye min’s cycle, body, gender. i think the emotional and logical need to merge together. that’s how i think most art should be viewed but esp if there’s things not “anchored” in reality. and it depends on the degrees of reality. most horror is already asking you to exist in some sort parallel world to ours that still mirrors ours (i hope this is making sense.)
so all the logical things are the emotional things and vice versa. i think a big one is WHY everyone believes these things exist so readily if they can’t see them. but the world itself is so inexplicable that they are just going with it. in an excerpt of the book that was translated it said sth like ‘they just told the teenagers it was an earthquake and although they were skeptical they went along with it because they were adults and they had to trust them even with teenage skepticism. and sometimes they trusted the wrong adults who shouldn’t be trusted at all’
which is where in pyo and eun young come in contrast with mackenzie and eun young’s friend. anyway. it’s really poetic but all the logical issues aren’t presented in a way that they can’t really be explained we just need time and space to get there (and i would love that.) but considering that it’s so nuts that its existence on its own even with all these unanswered questions (that can be answered) the ending is not an ending at all but it still satisfies.
At first I really felt like the series was incomplete and needed more episodes to figure it out. Now that I gave it time to sink in – and thanks to your and other people’s comments on the Beaniewall – I’m ok with the ending… But I would still be game for a second season, because there’s loads of things that I’d still like to find out about. It’s a really interesting concept! Been reading an interview with Chung Serang, the author, and she says that it is a” teen horror drama” about “people’s desire to be kind”
oooh where did you read about her? she seems so fucking cool. i really liked the translated parts i saw. i love it when you can see adults with empathetic imaginations esp when they reflect it back to one of the most crucial times in life.
i agree with you about a second season for sure. im gonna have to rewatch things anyway and try and find answers but i think they left things open ended instead of unintentionally introducing things then dropping them. i would love to know more about it and i reckon that they did that bc if they wanted to do a second season this is a perfect opportunity to do so. but as viewers we may have to understand that things may change and kyoung mi, nor the actors, etc may want to. and that’s ok.
HOWEVER YEA I WANT MORE ANSWERS if the book wwas translated in whole thatd be cool lol
idk if that makes sense. i didn’t think i’d like it and i thought it would be too happy (?) for me and not enough of a story but there’s such good artistry and you get reeled into what they want us to look at. i rly cant explain this well IM SORRY
i agree with you wholeheartedly! which is why she needs a community and a support system. why it matters that people are drawn to her. this is why her friend mattered. her relationship with kim kang sun was so sad but he wa sone of the most important people in her life. she had a profound affect on him (and he, her.)
she is a superhero but she has to not feel burdened by it. like, knowing you’re supposed to save the wrold is exhausting. but she isn’t alone. and they’re all a mess but that school and the ones we focus on are their own family. and eun young is someone who can’t ever be forgotten. she isn’t alone, she doesn’t have to be, everyone is just as crazy and strange as her. frankly she has no choice but to live her life the way she does so she can’t repress anything or run away from it if it literally manifests and follows her. i guess i would be relieved too if i didn’t have to see the world of emotions all the time.
another interesting is a life ending. the solution of safe happiness is doing what everyone else wants and denying who you are and being a duck (sheep.) if it’s too much, then you should just perish. someone else can take your place.
it is heavily metaphoric that’s for damn sure! but the jellies nad the ghosts are real and on the human plane as well as the emotional one which is why i think we can get answers and things can make sense. there’s a certain explanation for things and the idea of safe happiness is literally just cult bullshit. manufacturing everyone’s compliance.
the show really does do what they wanted it to do. to bring hope to others. the weirdness (OMG this just reminds me there’s this teen comedy called ‘o’grady’ and the town has this thing called the Weirdness and it just makes the people do weird things via their emotions. sometimes they can be magnetic if stressed, or their bodies can clone themselves if they are anxious and the setting is within a school cos….growing up!) anyway the weirdness and feeling out of place but knowing that there are people who will love you gives a viewer solace.
i love the quote “use a weapon. don’t hurt yourself and have fun while you’re at it. be a person who is loved by others.” she is, we are, i can be!!!
my therapist asked me “what is normal anyway?” cos she told me a story about a patient and his obsession and i judged him. then i learned that i, too, have ocd. to others my thoughts would sound insane just like his were to me. you can’t wish it away anyways so better to live through it and not die!!!
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amara
September 26, 2020 at 10:39 PM
hey let me try to, for once, find a better way to answer. @leetennant
actually that did NOT owrk out i absolutely failed to answer this swiftly. but i guess this will do as my whole Thoughts so i don’t have to think anymore. thank you so much for writing what you did, it really made me think…..i’m gonna post the rest of my comment in the comments woops
I mean I could be reductive and ignore the way in which a lot of this symbolism relates to people’s actual belief systems. And I will because that’s my jam. I just want to plant a flag on it in this instance (also because a lot of the symbolism went completely over my head, I’m not a part of this culture and so I’m reading this text as an outsider).
i didn’t think about the religion part overtly so when you mentioned it it sparked another round of philosophical pondering and what creators there are. she mentions at the end that she doesn’t know if anyone created her but thank god that she could experience a world with colors finally. and this is a way that the show accepts everything that’s around, to try anything that works, i really like the idea of everything being able to exist at once; no judgement, no one is wrong or right.
Anyway, to be reductive in my way: to me the jellies were representations of people’s emotions. So they weren’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’, they were just there. And if they were repressed or got overwhelming then the ‘energy’ of them built up and built up until they exploded like a whale spout of emotion. And so they built a school on top of the spout and covered it over and to me that was a symbol of emotional and – in this case – sexual repression. And that repression flowed over in that awful awful conversation in the teacher’s room, which was just horrible to witness.
i agree completely. they’re a physical manifestation of the world and emotions. it starts off with being represented as sexual which is important in a more sexually conservative society. i really enjoyed the lack of white goo between jellyfish and seungwon which indicated to us that there was no ‘like’ and i felt like my adult ~sensibilities~ was pushed onto them. i’ll get to the last sentence with the rest of what you said but hurtling towards that inevitably towards the end as things compound was so sad and so beautiful.
This means that ghosts are just emotional remnants of the people who loved and lost someone and I understand there are people who believe literally in ghosts but I’m not one of them. To me the whole show was about confronting and coming to terms with yourself as a whole person, even the parts that are nasty, selfish, embarrassing, humiliating or just plain depressing and negative.
so i, personally, believe in ghosts, and possibility, and a creator, and whatever. i don’t think it has to be either/or (but lbr i rarely think anything does.) the ideas of ghosts, a soul, spirits whatever is tied to personhood and all the things one was or is at one point. i hope this makes sense but emotion is tantamount to existence.
i have dreams about my grandma and grandpa sometimes and they’re so real. sometimes i wake up and think they’re still alive. my best friend is muslim but she’s like me with regards to religion (agnostic spiritualism something something.) but she told me that when the dead visit you in your dreams that means you meant a lot to each other.
i haven’t processed either of those deaths and probably wont ever and that’s largely because for the both of them i didn’t want to be around them as they got sicker. it was selfish and awful so i feel like with the dreams i can slowly come to terms with it.
have you seen hereditary or midsommarr? the director has a very interesting relationship with family, definitely some huge mommy issues, but both films left a serious impression on me because the main characters were running from their grief, mourning, their problems.
i have a whole-ass thing about midsommar (and i just remembered this is also what the show reminded me of! gotta make a list of films lol.) you’re supposed to just magically find your way out of a hole and not process what you feel. if you just smile you’re supposed to be okay. there’s another part in the film about usefulness and age—and cycles are big in the show—and if you should exist after you outgrow your usefulness to others (baek hye min.)
like in the movie, this fucking cult, these fucking jellies, these adults want all t run away these stupid teenage feelings, these stupid adult feelings, being able to shatter into pieces. if you just laugh at the top fo your lungs you’ll get better. in the end that’s how your demise finds you faster.
also pain and growing can be communal but conforming and feeling the one emotion as just one group, a blob, for safe happiness is the worst kind of existence. it doesn’t let you be a person just a part of a whole.
amara
September 26, 2020 at 10:39 PM
I loved that a character with a physical disability walked around with a figurative shield against people’s judgement. He was untouchable. And the Mite Eater’s whole arc of coming to terms with having aspirations that didn’t fit into the box that we try to put kids into. I mean at the end she literally drove out of her box and then told everyone she was in love with a girl.
that’s such a good point; i didn’t even think about his shield. there’s so much i miss even if i cant turn my brain off. i was really floored when they introduced his leg because she saw him and was enamored by his shield, for others it’s because of his looks, but when you see the metal then the shot of him dragging his legs it automatically takes him down a peg. he is seen as less than, or too different, or that this is something really wrong and detracts from him being attractive.
i felt the “oh” moment in my head. like an “oh, i didn’t expect that.” maybe that he would have something so visibly obvious and maybe that nam joo hyuk would play a character with something deemed unworthy and unattractive.
when they drove past 5.38…i didn’t get it the first time but when they moved past i started to cry. i loved that the mites were cute and she was a mite-eater and had to eat and eat and eat to not get sick. it’s rare to even let people in these shows consume that much, much less girls, without judgement. i realized that ahn eun young says the kids are healthy and i think that means in the way that everything they’re going through they should be allowed to go through. they’re healthy, just growing. it’s the school that sucking the life out of them to bring supposed good fortune to the greedy; the ones who don’t want to end up poor and unremembered or, worse, no one knowing you existed or passed.
finally i get to that scene with the teachers and it ties back into the many influences i see kyoung mi drawing from. i thought of “us” and “get out” by jordan peele are also two comparative films and all four films are horror! i truly believe this is a real horror show! i also thought of HDM (which i am positive one of them was inspired by. the movies i know for sure were seen but it was just too uncanny to not be.)
that conversation was such an indictment on everyone. i see it as more than just their sexual repression, which is extremely important to their overall subjugation, but a perfect reminder of all this repetition. the laughing yelling but trying to kill themselves, the yelling together in the classrooms, the women gathered at her friend’s house, the ducks, the laughter and smiling, team efforts and sports, hazing, whatever.
i keep saying this word but literally conform and the rigidness of the chinese symbols all the buildup emotionally, mentally, physically leads us to this understand fo “safe happiness” it’s that scene through and through.
amara
September 26, 2020 at 10:40 PM
i can’t pin down what “weird” means in the show’s terms but at its best it means unique at its worst, i think, it means the suppression and control others want.
what better way to start on them young? the jellies arent evil but what th ejellies can come to mean. evil is the mindset that you can’t be different and that you need to be fixed. i was stunned at the AIDS comment written in but it was another one of those things where it made prejudice seem so much simpler. they didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about and difference was a fucking threat.
“we should quickly inform the parents of the situation. when the children are old enough to know how to stay safe, we can tell the parents then.”
“[homos] should be dealt with at a young age”
and in pyo’s reply—it doesn’t need fixing. NONE of them do except to be helped through the pain and know it’s ok to feel. i think its’ interesting that the school was also intentionally built there because in my mind it’s like….we’re all pretty free when we come into the world but people pin us down and chain us to something. an internal world of a teen is something tough already why does everyone want to make it harder?
and none of these people are normal so what makes them so wrong and abnormal?
As a nurse, Ahn Eun-young was somebody who devoted her life to tending to other people’s wellbeing. So the question becomes – can she maintain that for her whole life? Can her whole life be service? And the answer becomes ‘no’, she needs things that are hers and hers alone. But also that doesn’t mean she needs to abdicate her responsibilities. She can – and should – do both.
Honestly I just loved the whole thing. And yes that’s because I chose to read it all metaphorically but I can’t really help that. That’s me.
i wonder if she can. i was surprised she was so happy without them because i feel like i would go crazy without a set path. i mentioned this a couple of times so excuse me for repeating but kyoung mi said she was doing this at a really dark time in her life as she was questioning if she wanted to quit. eun young is the happiest portrayal of hers yet; she has to accept her fate and live.
LT is Irresistibly Indifferent, Dame Judi
September 26, 2020 at 10:56 PM
“i was surprised she was so happy without them because i feel like i would go crazy without a set path.”
Oh I’m not surprised at all. The reason she lost her ability to see the jellies was because she’d stepped over that imaginary line of accepting her life and wanting something different and running away from those new emotions. She was scared of her feelings for In-pyo and scared of rejection and scared that her weirdness made her unlovable and she just wanted to put all that behind her and live a life of simplicity without all the complications. Her only real friend died and she wanted to turn off herself completely and be a person who didn’t feel. I was honestly so upset at the end when her own sinkhole of emotions blew and she literally left In-pyo in the dark and just RAN.
amara
September 26, 2020 at 11:05 PM
lmaoooo when he was like YOU WONT LEAVE ME and she promised smdh. i really didnt want her to leave bc of his leg.
her wailing like a baby…god i didn’t realize how much that would mean to her i guess. but what would she do if not for all she’s ever done? i guess that’s my personality. as much as she helps others emotionally, inevitably with the jellies, it sucks that all that isn’t enough to be happy or believe in yourself. but i don’t know what would happen if i had to deal with all that constantly. im already an emotional mess.
but she doesn’t want to be like them either. it would have been easier had she been normal i spose. but it probably would have always came back. you can’t outrun what you don’t deal with.
it makes her unique though being jaded and youthful. all the burden could have made her someone else. that’s why she’s school nurse ahn eun young u__u
LT is Irresistibly Indifferent, Dame Judi
September 26, 2020 at 11:09 PM
I saw it as more like grief. That she was pushing down a whole heap of her emotions anyway and when he died she just shut down.
amara
September 26, 2020 at 11:11 PM
oh no i meant when she realized her powers would come back. the whole scene with him is wonderful. i’m going to remember it for a long time and the dream she had after. the fact that he also was ready to shatter and didn’t beg to hold on was indicative of who he was as a person imo and i felt like he was a truly good soul.
Fly Colours
September 26, 2020 at 11:33 PM
Wow, @amara and @LT, that’s really good! I was trying to figure out some of this stuff, but wasn’t looking for the emotional truth under the characters’ actions, so they just didn’t make sense to me – the pointer about groups, the parallelism between Hyemin and Eunyoung having a set path, the reasons why Eunyoung lost her power and her running away… Jee! Of course, this drama works a lot better if you look at it from an emotional and symbolic – let’s say “poetic” perspective – instead of trying to figure out a “logical” plot
amara
September 27, 2020 at 1:13 PM
yes!!!! esp when eun young says “nothing is set in stone” in regards to hye min’s cycle, body, gender. i think the emotional and logical need to merge together. that’s how i think most art should be viewed but esp if there’s things not “anchored” in reality. and it depends on the degrees of reality. most horror is already asking you to exist in some sort parallel world to ours that still mirrors ours (i hope this is making sense.)
so all the logical things are the emotional things and vice versa. i think a big one is WHY everyone believes these things exist so readily if they can’t see them. but the world itself is so inexplicable that they are just going with it. in an excerpt of the book that was translated it said sth like ‘they just told the teenagers it was an earthquake and although they were skeptical they went along with it because they were adults and they had to trust them even with teenage skepticism. and sometimes they trusted the wrong adults who shouldn’t be trusted at all’
which is where in pyo and eun young come in contrast with mackenzie and eun young’s friend. anyway. it’s really poetic but all the logical issues aren’t presented in a way that they can’t really be explained we just need time and space to get there (and i would love that.) but considering that it’s so nuts that its existence on its own even with all these unanswered questions (that can be answered) the ending is not an ending at all but it still satisfies.
Fly Colours
September 28, 2020 at 12:37 AM
At first I really felt like the series was incomplete and needed more episodes to figure it out. Now that I gave it time to sink in – and thanks to your and other people’s comments on the Beaniewall – I’m ok with the ending… But I would still be game for a second season, because there’s loads of things that I’d still like to find out about. It’s a really interesting concept! Been reading an interview with Chung Serang, the author, and she says that it is a” teen horror drama” about “people’s desire to be kind”
amara
September 28, 2020 at 2:42 PM
oooh where did you read about her? she seems so fucking cool. i really liked the translated parts i saw. i love it when you can see adults with empathetic imaginations esp when they reflect it back to one of the most crucial times in life.
i agree with you about a second season for sure. im gonna have to rewatch things anyway and try and find answers but i think they left things open ended instead of unintentionally introducing things then dropping them. i would love to know more about it and i reckon that they did that bc if they wanted to do a second season this is a perfect opportunity to do so. but as viewers we may have to understand that things may change and kyoung mi, nor the actors, etc may want to. and that’s ok.
HOWEVER YEA I WANT MORE ANSWERS if the book wwas translated in whole thatd be cool lol
amara
September 28, 2020 at 2:42 PM
im also glad the discussions helped! yay!
Fly Colours
September 29, 2020 at 3:53 AM
The interview is actually on the same web you found the book excerpt: https://koreanliteraturenow.com/interviews/chung-serang-interview-chung-serang-champion-small-birds-and-fish
I like people who not only do their thing – not easy – but on top of that find time to lift others and make their work known… She sounds really cool!
amara
September 27, 2020 at 1:15 PM
idk if that makes sense. i didn’t think i’d like it and i thought it would be too happy (?) for me and not enough of a story but there’s such good artistry and you get reeled into what they want us to look at. i rly cant explain this well IM SORRY
amara
September 26, 2020 at 10:40 PM
i agree with you wholeheartedly! which is why she needs a community and a support system. why it matters that people are drawn to her. this is why her friend mattered. her relationship with kim kang sun was so sad but he wa sone of the most important people in her life. she had a profound affect on him (and he, her.)
she is a superhero but she has to not feel burdened by it. like, knowing you’re supposed to save the wrold is exhausting. but she isn’t alone. and they’re all a mess but that school and the ones we focus on are their own family. and eun young is someone who can’t ever be forgotten. she isn’t alone, she doesn’t have to be, everyone is just as crazy and strange as her. frankly she has no choice but to live her life the way she does so she can’t repress anything or run away from it if it literally manifests and follows her. i guess i would be relieved too if i didn’t have to see the world of emotions all the time.
another interesting is a life ending. the solution of safe happiness is doing what everyone else wants and denying who you are and being a duck (sheep.) if it’s too much, then you should just perish. someone else can take your place.
it is heavily metaphoric that’s for damn sure! but the jellies nad the ghosts are real and on the human plane as well as the emotional one which is why i think we can get answers and things can make sense. there’s a certain explanation for things and the idea of safe happiness is literally just cult bullshit. manufacturing everyone’s compliance.
the show really does do what they wanted it to do. to bring hope to others. the weirdness (OMG this just reminds me there’s this teen comedy called ‘o’grady’ and the town has this thing called the Weirdness and it just makes the people do weird things via their emotions. sometimes they can be magnetic if stressed, or their bodies can clone themselves if they are anxious and the setting is within a school cos….growing up!) anyway the weirdness and feeling out of place but knowing that there are people who will love you gives a viewer solace.
i love the quote “use a weapon. don’t hurt yourself and have fun while you’re at it. be a person who is loved by others.” she is, we are, i can be!!!
amara
September 26, 2020 at 10:41 PM
wow i am SO SORRY LMAO
LT is Irresistibly Indifferent, Dame Judi
September 26, 2020 at 10:57 PM
No need to apologise. As long as it’s isn’t bad, it’s better to be weird than ordinary.
amara
September 26, 2020 at 11:09 PM
my therapist asked me “what is normal anyway?” cos she told me a story about a patient and his obsession and i judged him. then i learned that i, too, have ocd. to others my thoughts would sound insane just like his were to me. you can’t wish it away anyways so better to live through it and not die!!!